Recovery Plan Not Acceptable to City

* I am writing to explain why the city of Garden Grove opposes the bankruptcy recovery plan recently put forward by the Orange County division of the League of California Cities. While we are in agreement with most of the plan, we have several concerns unique to Garden Grove that we feel are strong enough to require the city to oppose the plan.

Our first concern has to do with the sale of operating landfills to the Orange County Sanitation District. We strongly believe that the landfills are worth significantly more than the $250 million that the sanitation district has indicated it would pay. We believe that if the landfills are to be transferred, they should be sold through an open bidding process, with the fair market value of the properties constituting the minimum bid.

We also have a concern about the Orange County Sanitation District operating these important regional assets. Garden Grove, along with a few other cities, is not represented on the board of this organization, while the remaining cities in Orange County are.

Also of major concern is the prospect of shifting funds from the Flood Control District.

One final concern involves the continuing talk of so-called “cherry-picking” by various agencies, where an agency proposes to release the county of its repayment obligation in exchange for some public improvement owned by the county in that jurisdiction. We feel that such deals should be prohibited by the plan and that if any county assets are to be transferred, they should be disposed of through an open bidding process.

BRUCE A. BROADWATER

Mayor

Garden Grove